Friday, November 25, 2016

When Things are Bad, Russians Become More Dependent on and thus Supportive of Those in Power, Expert Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, November 25 – The failure
of pollsters to predict the victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential
elections has sparked new questions about the reliability of polls in the
Russian Federation, especially because they show approval for that country’s
leaders to be rising even as the standard of living of the population falls.

But that is not the contradiction
many assume, sociologist Leonty Byzov says. Rather ir reflects the reality
that, despite what many think and expect, “approval or disapproval of the
activity of the leadership of a country does not always correspond with how
things are going in that country” (svpressa.ru/society/article/161267/).

Byzov, who is not
only a senior scholar at the Moscow Institute of Sociology but also on the
scientific advisory council of VTsIOM, tells Svobodnaya Pressa’s Aleksey Polubota
that often “when the situation gets worse, people feel their dependence on the
authorities and approve all their actionsif they do not lead to complete
destabilization.”

At the same time, the sociologist
continues, “Putin’s high ratings today do not mean that everyone is well
inclined toward him. When we conduct deeper interviews, to determine attitudes
toward the president, it has turned out that about 40 percent of the population
is sympathetic to his personality and activity.”

The rest – that is, the other 50
plus percent – “simply understand that Putin is a guarantor of a definite
stability and approve his activity only in the sense that they do not want
destructive changes of the kind which they have had to deal with in our history
over the last several decades.”

As for the relatively positive
assessment of the Russian government as an institution, Aleksey Zudin of the
Moscow Institute of Socio-Economic and Political Research tells Polubota that Russians
had expected that the economic crisis would entail much worse consequences than
it has and are glad things have been getting as bad as they had thought.